NBA analysis with the precision of a rocket and the explosive power of a blog.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Birth Country of NBA Players for 2012

Note: I meant to post this last week, but my internet went down for a few days.

Introduction

Basketball has spread to nearly everything corner of the globe, and international stars feature heavily in the league from Nowitzki to Ginobili to Rubio. Playing styles have also permeated into the game with the Euro step now used by many American stars. Whenever the topic of international players comes up, an inevitable question is which country has the most. Similarly to how I constructed the studies on the racial/ethnic compositions of NBA teams, I looked at which countries had the most minutes played by NBA players who were born in the respective country.

Methodology

Statistics were from the 2011-12 regular season, while the birth country of each player was found online, which is surprisingly easy thanks to birth city and country being part of the vital stats that are always listed. While some players only lived in their birth country for as little as a year, I still included them for that particular country because I needed one standard way to label everyone and it would be too much work researching where everyone lived as a child and for how long. Guys born on a military base were listed with the home country of their parents (e.g. Boozer in Germany.) While some "countries" are not officially such, I thought it would be more informative to show the spread of the game by including such regions as the US Virgin Islands and French Guinea, which is one of several overseas departments of France that would have made their total even more impressive.

Populations were gathered from the CIA World Factbook online for an estimated 2012 July population except for the overseas departments of French Guiana, Guadeloupe, and Martinque, which used worldstat.info for the latest population estimates. I realize it's not a reputable source like the CIA World Factbook is, but their populations are so low the results would be wonky anyway. As a last note, when dividing the countries into continents Turkey was treated as half European, half Asian, and the Caribbean Islands along with Central America were given to North America.

Results

The main output of the study was a large global map color-coded based on how many minutes players from that country had. Although the US dwarfs the competition capturing over 82% of the total player minutes during the regular season, 48 different countries and territories were represented. Besides the US totaling an absurd 394,626 minutes out of 479,061 possible, the largest sum was Spain with 8713, but France also has a legitimate claim if you include their overseas departments like the 1176 minutes from French Guinea. (Spain's total is still only 1.8% of the total minutes played in the NBA.) Eastern Europe used to have the world's highest concentration of basketball talent overseas, but even Russia had a pitiful sum (Kirilenko played for an international team because of the lockout) and now the western Europe triumvirate of France, Spain, and Italy dominate the NBA.

The below picture shows the minutes of each country in the world with a color from white meaning zero minutes to red to black, which is reserved for the greatest contributor Spain. For a better look at the picture I'd recommend clicking on it to increase the size. I cropped much of the Pacific Ocean to fit the map, so Hawaiians please forgive me. The Olympics are starting soon, and the biggest contenders for the medals are highlighted -- the US had to be given a different color so it didn't skew the results, Spain is the greatest challenger to the US, France sports lots of talent but underwhelms in competitions, Argentina is aging but still effective, Brazil can't be ignored, Turkey surprisingly has the fourth highest minutes in the world, and Italy could sneak by someone. Greece has been one of the biggest threats for years, but their players like to stay in Europe. I also cropped Antarctica off the map as they sadly had no representatives.

There are some surprises, but this is from only one season. I suspect looking at the past, say, five seasons would be more representative of the league because you'd get more healthy seasons from guys like Bogut, Ginobili and even Yao, the lockout's effect on international players would be covered by four other seasons, and even more countries would be included. As it stands, this a snapshot of the league as it is now with players from Tanzania, Venezuela, Senegal, and the Czech Republic.

Looking at this from a continent perspective, North America is of course the leader but even without the US the minutes would be a healthy 12,498. Europe to no one's surprise is the leader ignoring the US, but I expected a stronger showing from South America given Brazil and Argentina's influence. Australia is low on the list, but if Bogut is healthy and Irving plays more minutes along with others like Patty Mills they could actually challenge Asia, who if it weren't for Turkey would have a pitiful total.

Country

North America

South America

Europe

Asia

Africa

Australia

Minutes

407,124

9665

44,655

6397

9037

2183

Finally, is it fair to compare the minutes that, say, Brazil has compared to Serbia? Brazil has one of the biggest populations in the world, and countries like Serbia or Lithuania don't even have the same number of people as many of Brazil's cities have. Accordingly, I used the 2012 population's from the CIA World Factbook to calculate the number of minutes per one million residents as an adjustment. The full results are in the appendix, and what's immediately obvious is that low population countries and territories like the US Virgin Islands are at a significant advantage. What's surprising, however, is that the US is ranked fifth despite having the third highest population in the world. Of course it's an American league, but that's still impressive.

Speaking of impressive, there are 22,177 minutes per one million residents in the US Virgin islands thanks to Duncan and Raja Bell. That's an immense lead over French Guiana at 4282 minutes. Slovenia outranked the US and was first among countries with at least a million residents (Udrih and Dragic are their representatives.) For larger countries, Serbia led with 342 followed closely by Switzerland at 339 for those over 5 million. For even larger countries Spain has a healthy 185 minutes per million residents. At the bottom of the list are mainly huge countries like China and Russia or ones with an insignificant amount of minutes like the Ukraine (17 minutes from Fesenko.) Mexico is the lowest ranked country with over 1000 minutes, but Brazil is interestingly also near the bottom. They have a ton of talented NBA players from Splitter to Nene to Barbosa, but the largest population and decrease in minutes due to events like Nene's injuries kept them down. Adjusting for population lets you compare the output of Sweden and France, which are similar on a per resident basis. You wouldn't think Sweden is a major force in the league, but they have a smaller population than most realize and Jonas Jerebko was skilled enough to earn major playing time. It's also the only way Venezuela will ever be ranked above Argentina in basketball.

Conclusion

The games are held in the US and one Canadian city, but it's an international game now. Ignoring the birth place of the players is ignoring the incredible journeys of guys like Ibaka and Nash. Countries like France and Spain produce players at an impressive rate, but Switzerland and Turkey are also two surprising basketball factories. Until Duncan retires, the US Virgin Islands will likely hold the title of highest NBA minutes per resident unless Svalbard suddenly produces an all-star. Small central and eastern European countries like Slovenia and Serbia punch above their weight class with a healthy output, which has been true since the Soviet Union. Despite the spread of the game, the US still dominates its own league with over 82% of the total minutes played and ranked fifth on a per resident basis, remarkable for such a large country. However, the NBA is now firmly defined as an international game, and forgetting the contributions of the non-Americans is forgetting a vital aspect that makes the game special.

2 comments:

That's a pretty huge work with surprising results. Congratulations Justin.In addition to your analysis, I would like to add that martinique, french guyana and guadeloupe (as much as La Reunion)are to France what Hawai is to US, cutlturally, in an administrative point of view and reagarding the standard of living.Also, there is several reasons to have so many french players in NBA: they are more NBA than euroleague oriented because traditionnally more physical and because the urban culture in france is surprisingly closer to what exists in US than spanish, turksih, italian or german ones (maybe even UK).But the main reason is that the french league sucks. Therefore, players are leaving very early and as euro teams are less willing to bid on pontential than NBA franchises, the choice is easy.That's just an info on what I know, I guess there is also some very specific rationals to the spanish situation and to why there are no greek players where there are producing some of the most complete and smart players in europe.GD

Yeah that's a good point about the French system. They also don't do as well in the Olympics or FIBA games as you'd think with all their talent. I think that's indicative that other countries in Europe actually have more talent but some of them stay in the leagues over there.

As for Greeks, I've heard often that they (or at least some of them) just don't like the US and would prefer to play in Europe. For example, Dimitris Diamantidis has been one of the best players overseas for years but hasn't wanted to play in the NBA expressing no interest and, at times, outright dismissal at the "American" league.